A key legislator says all the “tweaking” that can be done has been done and state budget negotiations are nearing an impasse. Senate Democratic Leader Mike Gronstal of Council Bluffs is among the handful of legislative leaders who’ve been meeting privately for weeks, trying to bridge the differences between Democrats and Republicans.  “I would say we have significantly closed the gap,” Gronstal told reporters this morning. “We closed it a little more yesterday, but I would say there’s still a significant gap.”

Gronstal, who is the top-ranking Democrat in the legislature, says that spending gap is less than 100-million dollars and the “biggest sticking points” remain. Democrats want to spend more on public schools than do Republicans and Democrats are pressing for more spending on government health care programs. “To the extent we underfund, don’t provide enough resources for health care, we raise all the rest of Iowans health care plans because of uncompensated care in hospitals and doctor’s offices and other health care providers across the state,” Gronstal says.

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen of Hiawatha, the legislature’s top Republican, says negotiators have “made progress,” but it’s difficult to bridge the gap. “Iowans picked a Democratically-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House. That’s not necessarily a recipe for a quick resolution,” Paulsen says. “It doesn’t mean we’re not committed to finding it.” Republicans are insisting on a seven-point-one BILLION dollar overall spending plan for the state budgeting year that begins July 1st.

Democrats and Republican Governor Terry Branstad favor an overall spending level that’s about 200 million dollars higher. Paulsen says Republicans in the House have proposed a budget that fits with the amount of taxes the state is expected to collect next year.  “Let’s remember that the ongoing revenue is $180 million, roughly, more than we had last year,” Paulsen says. “I mean, only in government is $180 million of new spending a cut.” For the past several weeks, the discussion among legislative leaders has centered on ways to use some of the state’s billion dollar surplus on some one-time projects or programs.

Paulsen says Republicans are willing to do some of that, but Gronstal suggests that well has been tapped out. “We are nearing the end of our ability to tweak things any further,” Gronstal says. The next state budgeting year starts July 1st and Gronstal gave this answer when asked how this budget dilemma might get resolved: “I’m not making any predictions on that, but in a timely way. We will not engage in a game of shutdown.” Gronstal, Paulsen and a handful of other legislators plan to meet late this morning (Wednesday) to resume budget negotiations.

There are a few policy matters involved as well. Senate Democrats, for instance, stuck anti-bullying policies for schools into a catch-all budget bill. Paulsen gave this answer when asked if House Republicans might accept that approach to making those policies state law: “I didn’t show up this morning prepared to say no to a whole host of things, so we’ll just roll with it,” Paulsen told reporters. It’s unlikely either the full House or Senate will meet for votes on Thursday or Friday.

(Radio Iowa)

Glenwood Police report two recent, separate arrests. Officials say on Tuesday, 33-year old Joshua Morrison, of Glenwood, was arrested for Domestic Abuse Assault. Morrison was being held without bond in the Mills County Jail until making an appearance before the magistrate. And, on Sunday, 48-year old David Craigmile, of Glenwood, was arrested for OWI. Bond was set at $1,000.

Iowa Department of Transportation Planning Coordinator Scott Suhr, today (Wednesday), provided an update on the Highway 6/7th Street construction project, in Atlantic. Suhr says the contractor is milling the asphalt surface off of US 6 through Atlantic, and will be working on that for about 3 days. The schedule for the remaining of the week (weather permitted) is as follows:

• Milling the asphalt surface off of US 6
• Removal of concrete on the east end of project
• Removal at Plum Street
• Sanitary sewer at Plum Street
• Pavement removal from Plum street to 400 feet east

A public hearing will be held Thursday morning, in Atlantic, with regard to a change of zoning classification from General Agricultural to a Light Industrial District, for a 1.32-acre parcel of land in Cass Township on property owned by Todd Leighton. The hearing at 8:40-a.m., is part of the Cass County Board of Supervisors’ regular weekly meeting. Following the hearing, the Board will act on approving the zoning change.

In other business, the board is expected to act on: Approving the placement of outdoor warning sirens for the City of Lewis, on County-owned property just east of the Lewis School building and west of the road; They’ll also act on authorizing County Auditor Dale Sunderman to sign on behalf of Cass County, for liability, property, medical, life and other insurance documents and claims.; Action will be taken as well on allowing business property tax credits for credit on taxes payable in 2015-16, and, on appointing a Cass Township Trustee to fill a vacancy term through 2016. The final action item is with regard to the appointing of a commissioner to the Southern Iowa Regional Housing Authority, representing Cass County. This would replace a motion set in place May 6th.

The Supervisor’s meeting takes place in their Board Room at the Courthouse, in Atlantic.

A relationship study of older mothers found more issues than expected with their children. Iowa State University researcher Megan Gilligan is the lead author the study which she says found one in 10 mothers had at least one estranged child. They didn’t start the study with a focus on finding mom and kids that weren’t talking. “So there were no questions directly asked, you know ‘is there a child who you are estranged from?’ But, we did ask all of the mothers about their relationships with each of their children,” Gilligan explains. “So the study was designed to look at how these relationships might vary. Some mothers may be closer to one child, or the opposite where they may be more disappointed in another child.”

The study included mothers aged 65 to 75 with children who were 45 or older. “The first thing we looked was if a mother had not contact — either in person or on the phone — in the last year. And then also, we classified estrangement if the mother maybe had very small amount of contact, so maybe she had talked to them once in the last year,” Gilligan says. They also asked the mothers about their emotional closeness and she says they were surprised at the number who say they have little emotional closeness to a child.

“Which is actually pretty rare in parent-adult child relationships. Most of the time mothers report either middle-range or actually high range emotional closeness. So, there were relationships that the mother reported very little emotional closeness to these children,” Gilligan says. Gilligan is an assistant professor of human development and family studies at I-S-U and conducted the research with colleagues at Purdue and Cornell University. She says they were surprised again when they started looking at the cause of the bad feelings between mother child.

“Immediately everyone kind of thought on the research team, well lets look at illegal behavior — so we looked at if the child had had problems with the law or if they had a substance abuse problem, ” Gilligan says. “But was really interesting is that didn’t predict estrangement. Those children weren’t more likely to become estranged.” They found something else impacted the rift.

She says value dissimilarities ended up being the strongest variable. The core values and beliefs of the mothers drove their views of their kids. “One of the mothers was really upset that her adult child had gotten a divorce and then remarried. She was Catholic and she said ‘that really goes against what I believe religiously and morally.’ So thing that were kind of core to their beliefs and values, if the child had violated those things, that’s what created this tension and strain in the relationship,” Gilligan explains. Gilligan says they didn’t expect those issues to cause so the estrangement.

“I think it’s interesting, because I think these are issues we often think about as political issues that you might get into a discussion around the table and get really upset about those types of things. But, I don’t know if most people would feel like these are things you would cut off contact from your child,” Gilligan. In addition to core values, researchers found the mother’s marital status was also a predictor. Mothers who were divorced or widowed were more likely to have an estranged child than mothers who were married.

Gilligan credits the role of the father. She says many of the incidents the created estrangement happened earlier in the child’s life and they might not have realized the impact it would have. Gilligan says the lesson could be that you need to focus on mending a relationship right away when these things happen. The new study is published online in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

(Radio Iowa)